The United States
Army and the Return to Normalcy in Labor Dispute Interventions: The
Case of the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars, 1920-1921

By Clayton D.
Laurie

Volume 50 (1991), pp. 1-24

On four separate occasions between 1919 and 1921 the United
States Army was ordered to intervene in labor disputes between
miners and coal mine operators in West Virginia. Federal military
interventions to maintain or restore civil authority threatened by
unrest or riots originating from labor disputes was not unknown
duty to army personnel. Between 1877 and 1920 several presidents
had called upon the army to assist civil officials in quelling
domestic disorders under authority of the Constitution and
congressional statutes. In the vast majority of federal military
interventions prior to 1917, regular army troops succeeded in
restoring order quickly, with a minimum of injury and bloodshed, in
strict adherence to orders issued within legal parameters set by
the Constitution, federal statutes, and army regulations. Although
questions of army neutrality were constantly raised, especially by
labor groups and workingmen who were most often the focus of
federal military interventions, historically United States Army
actions during American domestic disturbances were amazingly
non-partisan and non-violent when compared to the record of
National Guard forces while under state control.1

Although intervention in labor disputes was a relatively routine
duty for army personnel by 1920, the interventions in West Virginia
represented a watershed in the history of the army role in
suppressing domestic disorders. The Constitution and Revised
Statutes of 1874 clearly defined the procedures for state
authorities to gain federal military assistance and the Posse
Comitatus Act of 1874 prevented the misuse of federal military
power by local and state civil authorities before and after
regulars had been deployed. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker
suspended these legal procedures in 1917 for the duration of World
War I when National Guard forces, traditionally the first recourse
for state officials needing military forces to maintain order, were
federalized for wartime service in France. With the absence of
state military forces, the United States Army was called upon to
fill the void under a policy developed by Secretary Baker known as
direct access. A wartime expedient, the direct access policy
allowed local and state civil officials to summon directly federal
troops for quelling disorders without resorting to the complicated
pre-war procedure involving the state legislatures, president, and
the War Department. Without pre-war legal procedures, numerous
state and local officials, at the behest of local businessmen and
patriotic groups, took undue advantage of the easy access to
federal troops to crush labor unions or suppress radical groups and
dissenters. The years 1917-21 saw an unprecedented number of
federal military interventions in domestic disturbances and labor
disputes.2

The first army interventions in the West Virginia coal mine wars
were carried out under these wartime policies. In the final federal
intervention in West Virginia in 1921, however, the federal
government moved to restore the procedures that existed before the
war, having come to fear potential abuses of federal military power
by overzealous, inept, or corrupt state or local officials. The
West Virginia disturbances were significant as they closed a
chapter involving extraordinary extra-legal procedures in the
domestic employment of federal troops and in effect restored the
provisions of the pre-war statutes and the Posse Comitatus
Act. In other respects, however, the deployments in West
Virginia resembled other wartime interventions in labor disputes as
federal regulars were sent in to suppress what were deemed by
local, state and federal officials as radical and foreign-inspired
labor uprisings and challenges to legally constituted civil
authority. The army, therefore, closely cooperated with state and
local officials and mine owners and operators. In this respect, the
West Virginia interventions more closely followed the labor
disputes of the 1890s than those of the Progressive Era when
federal neutrality was more strongly emphasized. Within the army
itself, duty in West Virginia, following a four-year period of
extensive civil disturbance intervention, gave impetus to army
leaders to make significant preparations to systematically deal
with expected future radical disorders of even greater
magnitude.

While army and federalized National Guard units were on nearly
constant call between 1917 and 1918 to suppress strikes and labor
disorders in vital war industries, one sector that witnessed
surprisingly few such difficulties during World War I was the coal
industry. The wartime calm in the coalfields, obtained through
federal mediation efforts between management and labor, was an
exception to the normally turbulent labor situation that had
plagued the coal industry during the previous forty years. The
industry, however, had many unsolved labor problems from the
pre-war years, which by late 1919 had developed into a potentially
explosive situation, due to new unionization efforts.

Unionization had always met fierce resistance from coal
operators, who used eviction, termination, blacklisting, yellow dog
contracts, court injunctions, coercion, and intimidation to prevent
workers from joining unions and to stifle union organizers. By the
early twentieth century, especially in the eastern United States,
coal operators held and exercised exclusive political control and
strongly influenced local and state governments, literally
dictating state policies that would insure coal profits, prevent
labor organization, and guarantee a passive work force. Such tight
control was necessary, coal operators maintained, because of the
"boom and bust" nature of the coal mining industry, the instability
of consumer demand, competition at home and abroad, and constantly
fluctuating coal prices. Except for a brief period during the
Anthracite Strike of 1902, when the federal government openly sided
with labor organizations against recalcitrant mine owners, the
companies had successfully resisted attempts by miners to
unionize.

In the face of owner opposition, however, miners succeeded in
forming unions as early as the 1860s. None of these early
organizations gained national stature, recognition, or membership
until several merged to form the American Federation of
Labor-affiliated United Mine Workers of America (UMW) in 1890.
Although the UMW initially favored conference and arbitration
techniques rather than strikes, resistance on the part of coal
operators compelled the union to adopt strikes as the primary means
of obtaining its goals. Traditional miner demands became union
demands and included union recognition; the right of workers to
join a union, thereby ending yellow dog contracts; collective
bargaining; the right of free speech and assembly, especially
during strikes; the outlawing of cribbing, blacklisting, and
company anti-union espionage; the installation of scales to weigh
coal and miners to serve as check weighmen; the firing of all
company-paid mine guards; safer working conditions; and a check-off
system for the deduction of union dues.3

Mine unions made little progress on any of these demands prior
to World War I. The war years, however, provided some material
relief as mine union membership grew, reaching an all-time high of
427,811 members nationwide in 1918. Miners still felt, however,
that in spite of wartime increases, mine wages were out of
alignment with the rising cost of living and increases given in
other industries. Like other American workers of the time, the
members of the UMW were determined to maintain wartime gains and to
make new advances in the immediate post-war period.4

After the November 1918 Armistice, the UMW anticipated a sharp
decline in membership in the wake of demobilization, government
deregulation of industry, the increased cost of living, failed
industrial strikes, and resurgent efforts of the mining industry to
resist unionization with strikebreakers, injunctions, and yellow
dog contracts. While 50 percent of the mines in West Virginia were
unionized, most of these operations were in the northern half of
the state. To strengthen the UMW throughout West Virginia, local
union leaders launched a new recruiting drive in two anti-union
strongholds, Mingo and Logan counties. Coal operators counted upon
political connections in the state capitol and in the county
sheriffs' offices to resist unionization by manipulating the
machinery of local law enforcement against union organization
efforts. If these methods failed, brute force was often the next
recourse.5

Sheriff Don Chafin of Logan County, a popular figure to most
local people except miners and union men, embodied both the legal
and violent aspects of the operators' anti-union campaign. In the
pay of the operators, "Boss" Chafin misused his deputies to assault
and evict union organizers as soon as they set foot in the county.
Provoked by this opposition, the local branch of the UMW, District
17, organized from two to five thousand miners in September 1919
for a march on Logan County to unseat Chafin. Taking advantage of
the wartime arrangement for direct access to federal troops still
in effect, Governor John J. Cornwell asked the Commander of the
Central Department, Major General Leonard Wood, for a force to
intercept and disperse the marching miners. Wood consented and
gathered a federal force of sixteen hundred troops for deployment
in Logan County. The general's actions were consistent with the
direct access policy permitting intervention without prior civil or
military approval in situations of extraordinary or imminent
danger. Confronted by an overwhelming combination of
state-recruited sheriffs' posses and soon to be dispatched federal
military forces, whom the miners surmised sided with the operators,
the march was quickly terminated. Although the federal force was
not needed to deal with the miners' march, regulars were sent to
Kanawha City, Clothier, and Beckley in connection with the
nationwide coal strike of 1919.6

By this time, however, the Wilson Administration had decided to
reinstate pre-war policies and decrease the frequency of federal
military intervention in labor disputes. The first indication of
this change in policy came on November 3, 1919, when Secretary of
War Baker turned down a request from the governor of Georgia for
federal troops to intervene in a labor dispute. Baker
explained:

"It should be borne in mind that our Regular or permanent Army
is designed to resist and overcome enemies of our government and is
provided for strictly federal use. . . . The protection of private
property, rights, and liberties, and lives of the inhabitants of
any state is primarily the duty of the individual concerned. . . .
Use of federal troops for this class of duty has heretofore always
been the last resort. . . . Our Constitution contemplates such
force only when all other forces of a locality or state have been
exhausted . . . or insufficient to meet the emergency."7

In a complete reversal of the policy followed on every occasion
that federal troops were called to aid civil officials since spring
1917, Secretary Baker now severely limited the possible number of
situations in which states could obtain rapid and direct federal
military aid. Baker did, however, reiterate his willingness to aid
the governors of each state to reorganize, reoutfit, and retrain a
National Guard force as provided for by the National Defense
Acts of June 3, 1916, and June 14, 1917. At this time the
change in policy only affected those states that had organized
either National Guard units or sizeable constabulary forces. West
Virginia, however, lacked both.8

Meanwhile, in January 1920, the UMW moved its unionization
campaign from Logan to Mingo County. During the nationwide walkout
in the coal industry in November 1919, while unionized mines were
idle, the non-unionized mines of southern West Virginia continued
to produce coal thereby undermining the UMW's strike effort. UMW
President John L. Lewis and union officials in West Virginia were
determined that this situation would not recur, and began a massive
effort to organize miners in Mingo County -- an effort that
included a visit and rousing speeches by labor organizer and union
celebrity Mother Jones. The coal companies responded to the new UMW
campaign by wholesale firings of union miners, which resulted in
the closing of many operations, and increased harassment of union
organizers.

When operators hired Baldwin-Felts detectives from Bluefield to
evict the families of fired union miners from company housing and
tent colonies near the town of Matewan, they encountered resistance
from Chief of Police Sid Hatfield. Tensions between Baldwin-Felts
detectives and Hatfield continued through the spring until a
confrontation took place on the main street of Matewan on May 19,
1920. When Hatfield tried to arrest the detectives for illegally
evicting miners from their homes and illegally carrying weapons in
his jurisdiction, a gunfight ensued between the detectives and
Hatfield, who was assisted by a number of armed miners waiting in
ambush for the hated detective force. In the shootout that
followed, ten people died including Matewan Mayor Cable C.
Testerman, Lee and Albert Felts, five other Baldwin-Felts employees
and two miners. In the wake of the "Matewan Massacre," which made
Sid Hatfield a folk hero to miners throughout the state and
somewhat of a national celebrity, emboldened miners on July 1
initiated strikes all along the Tug River Valley in West Virginia
and Kentucky. Concomitant with this escalating strike activity was
an increase in the number of violent incidents by both miners and
company guards and detectives. By mid-summer, coal production in
the region had ground to a halt.9

On August 28, 1920, Governor Cornwell asked the new commander of
the army's Central Department, Major General George A. Read, for a
battalion of troops to guard the mines of southern West Virginia.
General Read responded by forwarding orders to the Second and
Fortieth Infantry Regiments at Camp Sherman, Ohio. Troops under
command of Colonel Samuel Burkhardt were dispatched immediately
under the policy of direct access and arrived in Williamson on
August 29. The next day, a force of five hundred regulars kept the
peace by conducting squad-size patrols near the Mingo County coal
mines. Federal troops soon saw action after their arrival and
employed "classic infantry tactics" on two occasions when fired
upon by sizeable groups of armed miners at the Howard Colliery and
at Thacker. Although gunfire was exchanged in these incidents, no
casualties were reported on either side.10

While federal troops were involved in confrontations with armed
miners, relations between the regulars and the local populace were
generally cordial. Both sides initially seemed to welcome the
federal troops as a neutral intermediary and a positive force for
ending the decades-old conflict between operators and miners. The
vast majority of the region's residents were law-abiding and
peaceful citizens before, during, and after the arrival of federal
troops. The children of Mingo County, especially, found the
soldiers on duty in their mining camps a curiosity. At least one
local girl, a school teacher, was courted by a soldier on duty in
the Matewan area, while another married a federal soldier from
Massachusetts. Federal troops provided food, clothing, and shelter
to miners made homeless by evictions and shared in celebrations
with local citizens on numerous occasions. Miners in return aided
troops in moving heavy military vehicles over the muddy and often
impassable mountain tracts and otherwise cooperated with the
regulars.11

In mid-September 1920, however, the efforts of coal operators to
import strikebreakers into the region caused rioting at Williamson.
Federal troops were summoned to protect the strikebreakers and
their families as they arrived at the Williamson train station, and
to escort the new miners to work. The presence of federal troops
allowed coal operators to reopen several mines with the use of
strikebreakers. Combined with court injunctions obtained by coal
operators in September that forbade the UMW from interfering with
mine operations, the various strikes in the region gradually
weakened. By November 4 violent incidents decreased and Governor
Cornwell requested the withdrawal of federal troops.12

Less than four days after the final November withdrawal of the
troops, the meager force of available deputy sheriffs and
constables demonstrated their inability to maintain peace in Mingo
County. New violence erupted. For the third time, on November 28,
1920, Governor Cornwell called on the Fifth Corps Area commander.
Tired of sending troops to put down unrest that immediately renewed
after withdrawal, General Read urged the governor to submit a
request for aid to the president, according to RS 5297, stipulating
that the legislature could not be convened in time to submit its
own request. By having Cornwell follow the pre-war procedure, Read
hoped to obtain a presidential proclamation under RS 5300 for the
strikers to cease, desist, and disperse. In Read's opinion, the
unorganized and leaderless miners were likely to ignore the
proclamation. He would then be empowered to declare martial law and
deploy his troops near the mines, as in the past, and to assist law
enforcement officers as a posse comitatus in arresting union
members and thereby end the strike.13

While approving Governor Cornwell's request for military aid on
behalf of the president, Secretary of War Baker refused to secure a
presidential proclamation. When Baker had initiated the policy of
direct access in 1917, he had done so to avoid the delays
characteristic of formal presidential involvement. Thus when
General Read sent a provisional battalion of the Nineteenth
Infantry, commanded by Colonel Herman Hall, from Camp Sherman,
Ohio, into Mingo County on November 28, it went with no more
authority than its predecessors; that is authority under the direct
access policy and paragraph 487 of the army regulations. Cornwell,
in an effort to comply with federal stipulations, proclaimed a
state of martial law on November 27, placing the sheriff's
department and the small state constabulary under Colonel Hall. The
gesture was meaningless as many of the law enforcement officials,
like Sid Hatfield, either sympathized with the miners or feared
them. Either way local officials were incapable of handling the
situation. To counter these uncooperative lawmen and restore order
permanently, General Read himself requested a presidential
proclamation and martial law powers from Secretary Baker.14

Baker's patience with West Virginia officials was nearing an
end, and in a memorandum written on December 2, 1920, he refused
Read's request, stating: "The rule to be followed is that the
public military power of the United States should in no case be
permitted to be substituted for the ordinary powers of the States,
and should be called into service only when the State, having
summoned its entire police power, is still unable to deal with the
disorder."15 Baker explained that during the war, when National
Guard units under federal control were no longer available to the
states, he had suspended pre-war procedures for obtaining federal
troops. However, Baker complained, two years after the war, the
states had no excuse for failing to reconstitute guard units or
fully resume state police functions. In an obvious effort to
curtail further reliance on federal military aid, Baker finally
rescinded the direct access arrangement between governors and corps
area commanders. Henceforth, all requests for federal troops would
have to be made through the War Department to the president,
according to pre-war procedures, unless the danger was so immediate
as to warrant emergency intervention. Meanwhile, Baker instructed
Read on December 1 to begin immediate withdrawals of the Nineteenth
Infantry from riot duty in the state.16

Governor Cornwell feared renewed trouble in January, when Sid
Hatfield and other participants in the Matewan Massacre were to
stand trial for the murder of the Felts brothers and other
Baldwin-Felts detectives. He requested Secretary Baker to delay
withdrawals at least until the legislature could reconstitute the
state's National Guard units. Assured by Cornwell of West
Virginia's intent to assume responsibility for maintaining law and
order, Baker agreed to withdrawal of one company each on January
15, 17, and 19, 1921, to Camp Sherman, Ohio. The last company and
the regimental headquarters, however, were to remain in Mingo
County until February 16, 1921.17

Three months later economic recession and the results of two
elections disturbed the shaky calm that had existed since Colonel
Hall's final withdrawal. Making cheap labor more readily available,
the recession of 1921 enhanced the position of the mine operators.
In addition, Ephraim F. Morgan, the candidate favored by coal
operators for governor, took office on March 4. Nationally, the
newly-elected Republican President Warren G. Harding, who ran on
the slogan of a "Return to Normalcy," showed no indication of
sympathy for the plight of the miners. Expecting no help from the
state or federal governments to overcome resistance to unionization
in Mingo and Logan counties, the UMW opted once again for the
tactics of confrontation. Rumors soon spread that the union was
smuggling weapons to miners on both the Kentucky and West Virginia
sides of the Tug River. Governor Morgan sent Captain of
Constabulary James R. Brockus with sixty state police to Mingo
County to investigate. Defiant miners greeted the state police with
sporadic rifle fire up and down the banks of the Tug from May
12-14, an incident known as "The Three Days Battle." Skirmishes
between miners and constables, company guards, and non-union
strikebreakers, raged along the river and the surrounding hills
near the villages of Merrimac, Rawl, Sprigg, and Matewan, West
Virginia, and McCarr, Kentucky, resulting in the deaths of at least
four people and the wounding of many more.18

Despite Governor Cornwell's promise to Secretary of War Baker
two months earlier that West Virginia would rapidly reestablish a
National Guard force, the state legislature had only begun to take
steps in that direction. Perhaps presuming that the new Secretary
of War James W. Weeks would permit direct access one more time,
newly-elected Governor Morgan asked General Read on May 12, 1921,
for five hundred troops, "to prevent wanton slaughter of innocent
citizens." The next day, Governor Edwin P. Morrow of Kentucky,
whose state also suffered from intermittent gunfire along the Tug
River, made a similar request. Read declined to send troops to
either state pending approval by President Harding. In anticipation
of such approval, however, Read, on his own authority, alerted the
Nineteenth Infantry for a return to Mingo County and dispatched his
intelligence chief Major Charles F. Thompson to Charleston to
determine the extent of the emergency.19

After consulting with Governor Morgan, local officials, and
spokesmen for Mingo County's chief coal operator, the Houston Coal
and Coke Company, but apparently making no effort to learn the
miners' side of the controversy, Major Thompson decided that
lawless miners had caused a serious disorder warranting some form
of military intervention. However, Major Thompson had also
investigated the military capability of the governments of Kentucky
and West Virginia, seeking to discover whether the available state
forces could end the disorders. His assessment was that Kentucky,
with three hundred deputy sheriffs and a fully organized National
Guard force comprising five companies of infantry and three troops
of cavalry, needed no federal assistance. Indeed, one hundred and
fifty guardsmen had already been sent to the Kentucky side of the
Tug River Valley and reported the situation there as improving.
West Virginia, on the other hand, having temporized with the
organization of its National Guard, had raised a relatively small
volunteer state police force made up of "respectable Mingo County
citizens." Major Thompson concluded, however, that in the cases of
both Kentucky and West Virginia "authorities have not taken
sufficiently active measures . . . (and that) for purposes of both
politics and economy, they have decided to rely on federal
protection."20

Major Thompson recommended against a third deployment of troops
to West Virginia without a presidential declaration of martial law.
In 1919 and 1920, the War Department had limited the troops in the
state to guarding the mines. In each case lawlessness recurred as
soon as the troops withdrew. Thompson concluded that a state of
martial law, giving troops the power to make arrests, hold
prisoners, and supersede uncooperative officials, was necessary to
produce lasting results. In full accord, General Read endorsed and
forwarded Thompson's recommendation to the Secretary of War on May
16, 1921. The next day President Harding informed Governor Morgan
that there would be no federal troops until Harding was "well
assured that the State had exhausted all of its resources in the
performance of its functions."21

Morgan had, however, exhausted his resources. After declaring
martial law in Mingo County on May 19, he placed Brockus's
constabulary at the command of the county sheriff. In the decision
Ex Parte Lavinder, however, the West Virginia Supreme Court
of Appeals ruled that there could be no martial law dependent upon
a civil officer, such as a sheriff, for enforcement. Martial law
could only be enforced by a state militia which West Virginia
lacked. Morgan therefore resorted to calling part of the untrained,
unorganized, enrolled militia of Mingo County to active duty. The
Mingo Militia, made up of coal company officials, strikebreakers,
non-union, and anti-union men, promptly and enthusiastically
enforced the provisions of martial law against miners. Mass arrests
of miners by the militia were followed by increased sniping and
bombing incidents, and more bloodshed. Rather than quelling
violence as intended, martial law and its partisan enforcement
heightened the tensions between strikers and operators throughout
Mingo County. The new outbreaks of violence further supported
appeals for a congressional investigation of the hostilities in the
West Virginia coalfields.22

On July 14, 1921 the Senate's Committee on Education and Labor,
chaired by Iowa Republican Senator William Kenyon, began a
three-month investigation of the recurring crises in West
Virginia's coal mining industry. Interviewing scores of witnesses,
including Sid Hatfield, union officials Fred Mooney and Frank
Keeney, and Captain James Brockus, the Kenyon Committee's hearings
aired innumerable abuses by the operators and kindled short-lived
hopes among the miners for immediate reforms. In its October 1921
report, the committee condemned, among many other things, the
practice in Logan County of paying the sheriff and his deputies
from funds contributed by the coal operators instead of exclusively
from the public treasury, but no immediate reforms were
forthcoming.23

While in Washington testifying before the Kenyon Committee, Sid
Hatfield learned that he and thirty-five miners had been indicted
by a West Virginia grand jury for their alleged role in an attack
on a non-union mining camp the previous summer. Although Hatfield
suspected the charges were trumped-up by the state at the urging of
the Felts family, still seeking vengeance for Hatfield's role in
the Matewan Massacre, he returned to West Virginia to stand trial.
On the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse in Welch on August
1, 1921, the gunmen of the Baldwin-Felts Agency avenged the deaths
of Albert and Lee Felts and their colleagues by shooting to death
the unarmed Sid Hatfield and an associate, Ed Chambers, as the two
men and their wives prepared to enter the court building. The death
of the popular chief of police enraged grief-stricken union miners
and their sympathizers throughout southern West Virginia.24

Capitalizing on the miners' outrage, Frank Keeney, UMW District
17 president, organized a rally in Charleston and called for a
march against the coal operators. On August 7, one thousand miners
presented Governor Morgan with a resolution calling for an end to
martial law in Mingo County. By that date, nearly one hundred and
thirty miners had been arrested and held without charges. When the
governor refused to rescind state-imposed martial law, Keeney
called upon the miners to assemble on August 20 at Marmet, just
south of Charleston. From that location, along the banks of Lens
Creek in Kanawha County, Keeney hoped to march thousands of miners
sixty-five miles to Logan County, and from there to Mingo. Keeney's
objectives remain uncertain, but evidence supports the idea that he
hoped a gun battle would ensue eliminating thirty-four year old
Sheriff Don Chafin and enough mine company guards and private
detectives to open the area for union organizers. If that failed,
at least the march and ensuing violence would force federal
intervention which the miners considered preferable to bossism or
state enforced martial law.25

On August 20, 1921, nearly five thousand miners, armed with
rifles and an old machine gun with three thousand rounds of
ammunition, assembled at Marmet. Their commander, "General" Bill
Blizzard, a twenty-eight year old man of proven leadership in
District 17, formed the men into a column and began the march
toward Logan. Along the way new recruits swelled the column until
it reached fifteen to twenty thousand men. Informed of "Blizzard's
Army," Secretary of War Weeks directed General Read, on August 23,
to place the Nineteenth Infantry in readiness, and sent Major
Thompson to Charleston to investigate. Realizing that two years of
cumulative "insurrectionary fury" were about to explode in the
coalfields, Governor Morgan, on August 25, asked President Warren
Harding for one thousand troops and military aircraft. According to
Morgan "the miners had been `inflamed and infuriated by speeches of
radical officers and leaders'." Learning that Morgan had taken what
appeared to the president as only slow and halting steps to
organize a National Guard, Harding withheld aid pending reports
from his military advisors. Initial reports from Major Thompson
minimized the need for federal troops, but in face of continued
requests for help, Secretary of War Weeks determined further
information was needed.26

On August 25, Secretary Weeks, with the approval of President
Harding, sent Brigadier General Henry H. Bandholtz, Commander of
the Military District of Washington and former Provost Marshal for
the American Expeditionary Force in France, to investigate the West
Virginia situation. The fifty-six year old general carried with him
a mandate to determine whether the use of federal troops was
necessary or the mere threat to use federal military force would
suffice in restoring order. When his train arrived in Charleston in
the early morning hours of August 26, 1921, Bandholtz immediately
conferred with Thompson, Morgan, Keeney and Mooney. Armed with the
authority of the White House and the War Department, Bandholtz
wasted little time in exerting pressure.27

General Bandholtz informed Governor Morgan, and later the two
union leaders, that he was indifferent to the merits of the dispute
between miners and coal operators, but was concerned only with the
president's directive to restore law and order without delay and
preferably without bloodshed. During his meeting with Bandholtz,
Morgan claimed that the southern counties were at the mercy of an
army of rabble, and insisted that army intervention alone would
prevent loss of life and destruction of property. Convinced that
the miners were in the wrong, Bandholtz warned Keeney and Mooney
that he considered them personally responsible for the march and
any problems caused by the miners, as well as any consequences that
might ensue if the army stepped in. Bandholtz stated: "These are
your people. I am going to give you a chance to save them, and if
you cannot turn them back, we are going to snuff them out like that
(snapping his finger under Frank Keeney's nose). This will never
do, there are several million unemployed in this country now and
this thing might assume proportions that would be difficult to
handle."28

For his part, Keeney conceded that Blizzard's army might get
violent if it met resistance, but promised that the marchers would
disperse if guaranteed federal protection against reprisals by
Sheriff Chafin and the operators' guards. After Keeney and Mooney
agreed to disband the miners, General Bandholtz gave them a
handwritten ultimatum to convince skeptics that he meant business.
Confident the marchers would yield, Bandholtz nonetheless requested
permission from Secretary of War Weeks to continue preparations for
the deployment of troops equipped with tear gas dispensed from
mortars.29

Major General James G. Harbord, Deputy Chief of Staff, wired
Bandholtz complimenting him for his "great skill" in handling
matters. Harbord further directed Bandholtz to have Governor Morgan
rewrite the formal request for military aid, originally submitted
on August 25, to include both a statement that the governor would
try to convene the state legislature and a list of measures that he
would use to reassert state authority against the insurgents. This
would place Morgan in compliance with RS 5297. Harbord, however,
referred specifically to what he called West Virginia's egregious
failure to accept money available to the states for the
establishment of a National Guard, inferring this would hinder
federal efforts.30

Even while negotiating with Governor Morgan, General Harbord
proceeded with preparations to intervene. On August 26, he sent
Bandholtz to prepare for infantry operations and instructed Major
General Charles T. Menoher, Chief of the Air Service, to examine
Kanawha Field, outside Charleston, to determine its suitability for
use in either reconnaissance or tactical air support operations.
Later in the day, commander of the First Provisional Air Brigade,
Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, personally led a flight of three
olive-drab DeHavilland Bombers (DH-4B) from Bolling Field in the
District of Columbia to execute Harbord's orders concerning Kanawha
Field. Upon landing, Mitchell, never one to mince words about
airpower, commented to the press that the Army Air Service, by
itself, could end the civil disturbance by dropping canisters of
tear gas upon the miners. If that failed he recommended the use of
artillery by the ground forces to bring the crisis to a speedy
conclusion.31

Fortunately, Billy Mitchell lost the opportunity to demonstrate
what tear gas or artillery could do to mountaineers, miners, and
immigrants armed with hunting rifles. As soon as Keeney and Mooney
read Bandholtz's note and addressed the crowd, the miners decided
to call off the march. The two men impressed the group with the
seriousness of the current situation and appealed to their loyalty
and patriotism. If the march continued, it was stated, it would be
done against the direct orders of the President of the United
States. The miners would then be facing the entire might of the
federal government and the United States Army. For the first time
many miners realized that their march was interpreted by federal
authorities as a rebellion against the West Virginia and federal
governments and not as a justified and righteous struggle against
what miners perceived as greedy coal operators, corrupt sheriffs,
or ruthless Baldwin-Felts "thugs." As the marchers began to
disperse, Keeney and Mooney hurriedly made arrangements with local
railroads on August 27 to return the miners to their homes.32

Upon learning of these events, General Bandholtz, accompanied by
Major Thompson and Bill Blizzard among others, visited the
positions previously occupied by the miners. Satisfied that the
emergency was over, the general wired the War Department that while
all alerted units could stand down, they should remain prepared for
future use. Bandholtz had no confidence in the ability of Governor
Morgan and the legislature to maintain order, stating, "the State
had made only a feeble attempt to check the growth of the insurgent
movement or to keep reasonable touch with its progress." That same
day Bandholtz boarded a train for Washington, while General
Mitchell flew back to Bolling Field. Despite the outward appearance
of calm, actions by state authorities almost immediately stirred
further unrest.33

At midnight, August 27, 1921, in an ill-advised move to arrest
leaders of the miners' march and union miners involved in a recent
fracas with state police, a posse of from seventy to one hundred
deputies and state police, led by Sheriff Don Chafin and Captain
James Brockus, went to the small mining community of Sharples north
of Blair Mountain, near the Boone County line. In a confrontation
with miners that resulted in a gunfight, at least two miners were
killed and two others were wounded. From positions on adjacent
hillsides, miners fired at the police forces who quickly withdrew.
Within forty-eight hours, five thousand miners streamed back into
the area to defend their homes against what they perceived as a new
and unwarranted attack by those in league with the coal operators.
Miners who were awaiting trains to return to their homes from the
aborted march on Logan County now refused to board, and resumed
their march. Chafin and Brockus, in an effort to contain and combat
the new uprising, raised a volunteer force of approximately three
thousand anti-union, anti-miner "militiamen," and took up positions
near the summit of nearby Blair Mountain. With the miners deployed
along a ten-mile front at the base of the mountain, determined to
wipe out all impediments to their march, Governor Morgan on August
29 renewed his application for federal troops, citing an
insurrection fanned by the influx of "Bolshevist" outsiders from
Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. The next day Morgan appended to his
request a statement that the legislature could not be convened in
time to avert bloodshed.34

The ineptitude and insensitivity displayed by West Virginia
officials during the raid at Sharples convinced President Harding
and his principal advisors that Governor Morgan and county
officials were obviously too much a part of the problem to share in
its solution. On August 30, Harding issued a proclamation under RS
5300 as the first step toward federal intervention to protect West
Virginia from domestic violence. The proclamation called for both
the miners and the Logan County force to disperse by noon on
September 1, 1921. It was the first such presidential proclamation
regarding a civil disorder issued since the American entry into
World War I four and one-half years before. The proclamation
finally and formally put to rest the wartime policy of direct
access in action as well as thought.35

Accompanied by Chief of Staff Colonel Stanley H. Ford and Judge
Advocate Colonel Walter A. Bethel, General Bandholtz returned to
Charleston on August 30. Secretary of War Weeks had ordered
Bandholtz to investigate compliance with the proclamation and
provide guidance for the army in the event neither side dispersed.
Neither side immediately complied. With the broad mission of
suppressing domestic violence, dispersing lawbreakers, and
maintaining order, Weeks gave Bandholtz some leeway as to tactics
and the degree of force to be employed by stating that "necessity
is the measure of your authority." Bandholtz's instructions
translated into qualified martial law -- a modified form of martial
law in which his troops would support civil authorities in
executing state laws. Secretary Weeks wrote Governor Morgan on
August 31, 1921, "I very earnestly hope that it may not become
necessary to employ federal troops. If they are used it will be to
restore peace and order in the most effective and prompt way. The
problem will be regarded by the military authorities purely as a
tactical one."36

Support for civil authorities was contingent upon the ability of
local and state forces to suppress violence and restore order
efficaciously. If Bandholtz determined that civil officials were
ineffective, or even negligent by releasing prisoners whom they
knew would contribute to new disorder, the general was to detain
the prisoners in his custody "as long as necessity exists." In
cases where the military refused to turn prisoners over to civil
officials, Bandholtz was to detain those prisoners as ordinary
military prisoners under the provisions of the Court Martial
Manual. In each case, however, Weeks required the general to
forward a full report of the circumstances.37

By September 1, private airplanes had dropped copies of
Harding's proclamation on the belligerents. Each side, now totaling
an estimated ten to twenty thousand men, refused to comply: the
Logan County force was unwilling to relinquish the commanding
heights of Blair Mountain, and the miners feared that their
withdrawal would precipitate new raids by Sheriff Chafin and
Captain Brockus. Arriving in Charleston at 11:30 a.m., General
Bandholtz carried with him a second proclamation that reflected the
belated realization of President Harding and Secretary of War Weeks
that the 1866 decision in Ex Parte Milligan after the Civil
War prohibited "martial law . . . where the courts are open and in
the proper and unobstructed exercise of their jurisdiction."38

On September 1-2, intermittent skirmishing took place as the
miners probed the positions of the defending force. Not content
with rifle and machine gun fire to repulse the miners, the coal
company operators associated with the Logan County force at one
point arranged for commercial aircraft to drop homemade bombs
filled with nails and metal fragments upon the miners. The bombs
missed their targets or failed to explode. This incident gave rise
to a short-lived rumor that the army had bombed the miners. A
member of General Bandholtz's staff, Captain J. W. Wilson, compared
the Battle of Blair Mountain -- with its considerable expenditure
of ammunition interrupted by frequent breaks for coffee, lunch,
liquor or rest -- to comic opera. Wilson observed neither ground
taken nor casualties suffered. On September 3, the miners
repeatedly attempted to overrun the militiamen, but without
success, due largely to their lack of organization, leadership, and
a common tactical goal.39

As the miners prepared their assaults up Blair Mountain, General
Harbord ordered four units, previously selected for the task, to
West Virginia. Eleven officers and 201 enlisted men of the
Nineteenth Infantry and 15 officers and 224 enlisted men of the
Tenth Infantry Regiments came by rail from Camp Sherman and
Columbus Barracks, Ohio. The first troops of the Nineteenth
Infantry arrived in West Virginia on September 2. From Camp Knox,
Kentucky, General Bandholtz ordered 36 officers and 384 men of the
Fortieth Infantry Regiment to West Virginia, while further orders
prompted the dispatch of 47 officers and 158 men of the
Twenty-sixth Infantry Regiment from Camp Dix, New Jersey. In
addition to the above forces, all of which arrived on September 3,
a detachment of Chemical Warfare troops equipped with tear gas were
dispatched from Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. All told, General
Bandholtz commanded a federal military force of 2,106 troops. To
supplement this federal force Governor Morgan directed on September
3 that all "state and county officers . . . deputies, assistants,
and other subordinates" cooperate with and obey General Bandholtz
and his subordinates.40

While orders went out to the infantry regiments, General Harbord
directed the Chief of the Army's Air Service, General Charles T.
Menoher, to have General Mitchell send twenty-one aircraft of the
Eighty-eighth Aero Squadron, commanded by Major Davenport Johnson,
to Kanawha Field. In light of General Mitchell's reputation as a
zealous booster of air power and his proclivity to "steal the
show," the War Department ordered him to relinquish command of the
squadron to Bandholtz and by no means accompany that unit to West
Virginia.41

On September 1, DeHavilland DH-4B bombers, each equipped with
front- and rear-mounted machine guns and carrying tear gas and
fragmentation bombs, began the three hundred and twenty mile flight
from Langley Field to Charleston. After spending the night at
Roanoke, Virginia, the planes crossed over the Appalachians and by
late afternoon, eleven had landed at Kanawha Field. Of the
twenty-one planes requested, only seventeen were in proper
condition and managed to take off from Langley Field. Two planes
experienced mechanical difficulties at Roanoke and one crashed
there on take-off. Another bomber experienced engine difficulty
over West Virginia and crash-landed near Beckley, while two others
became lost in dense fog and ended up landing in Mooresburg,
Tennessee. Four additional aircraft, twin-engine "box-like Martin
bombers," from Aberdeen, Maryland, were also ordered to Kanawha
Field but only three survived the flight. The total number of army
aircraft in West Virginia by September 2 stood at fourteen. The
bombers and their crews became an instant hit with the local
population who had never seen so many military aircraft at one time
in one place. Although neither the DeHavillands or Martins ever
used their armament, they performed several reconnaissance missions
and enjoyed the unique distinction of being the first air unit to
participate in an American civil disturbance. Mitchell subsequently
boasted how the "`Mingo War' provided an excellent example of the
potentialities of air power, that can go wherever there is air, no
matter whether they be over water or land."42

With no more than two thousand troops and fourteen bombers to
overawe the civilian combatants of both sides, General Bandholtz
deployed on September 3, 1921. From the Chesapeake and Potomac
Telephone Company building in Charleston, Bandholtz divided the
area around Blair Mountain into three operational zones and
deployed his command in a classic pincer movement around the two
civilian forces. The first group of regulars, under the command of
Colonel C. A. Martin and Major Charles T. Smart, Nineteenth
Infantry, were ordered to advance southeast by rail along the Coal
River from St. Albans to Madison, Danville, Sharples, Jeffrey, and
finally Blair, to the rear of the miners' army at the base of the
mountain. The Fortieth Infantry, in a second column under the
command of Colonel G. A. Shuttleworth, would move on Logan,
positioning themselves behind Blair Mountain opposite the miners
and behind the army raised by Sheriff Chafin. The remaining federal
troops, regulars of the Twenty-sixth Infantry, would reinforce the
remaining units of the Nineteenth Infantry at Madison, with
additional companies positioning themselves along the Kanawha River
at Marmet, Paint Creek, Lens Creek, and Montgomery. As the first
two columns began their double envelopment of the Blair Mountain
battle area, General Bandholtz ordered a cease-fire to go into
effect at 4 p.m. In compliance with Governor Morgan's order to obey
Bandholtz, the sheriff's deputies and the volunteers of the Logan
force immediately disbanded. The miners, reassured then that they
would not be attacked, and unwilling to resist so many regulars and
the power of the national government, surrendered to the federal
troops or simply went home. Although casualty figures were not kept
by either side, best estimates put the death toll during the Battle
of Blair Mountain at sixteen with all but four of the dead being
miners. None of the casualties were inflicted by federal
forces.43

Between September 4-8, 1921, federal troops disarmed and sent
home without incident nearly fifty-four hundred miners. Having
dramatically restored peace and order, virtually without firing a
shot and without army-induced bloodshed, General Bandholtz refused
Governor Morgan's subsequent request for military posses to help
civil authorities arrest miners wanted for violations of state
laws. The maintenance of long-term order in West Virginia and the
arrest of suspects, in Bandholtz's mind, was not an army job once
calm was initially restored. Military intelligence agents
investigated union headquarters and meeting halls for evidence
linking the marchers to a radical conspiracy. The agents found
almost no radical literature, in spite of coal operator claims, and
determined that a mere 10 percent of the miners were foreigners,
"poor ignorant creatures who will believe anything that they are
told." One intelligence officer stated in his report, "I cannot
find that any organization except the UMW operating in this field
openly. . . . A small amount of I. W. W. and Bolshevist literature
has been taken from departing miners." Although trouble was
expected by the army prior to its arrival in West Virginia, during
the entire deployment no violent incidents by miners against
federal troops were reported.44

For the next three months, withdrawals of army troops proceeded
piecemeal and in the face of strong political opposition. General
Bandholtz first recommended a partial withdrawal of regulars on
September 7. The next day Secretary Weeks ordered the return of the
Twenty-sixth Infantry to Camp Dix, the Eighty-eighth Aero Squadron
to Langley Field, and the Chemical Warfare Detachment to Edgewood
Arsenal. Countering the withdrawal, Republican Senator Howard
Sutherland pressed Weeks to retain a federal force near Charleston
as a deterrent to future mining disorders.45

Weeks, like General Bandholtz, opposed detaining federal troops
for "police duty," especially when congressionally-mandated
budgetary constraints favored immediate return of all regiments to
their home stations. Nevertheless, bowing to the request of the
senator, the Secretary of War placed the remainder of federal
troops, now less than thirteen hundred men, under the commander of
the Nineteenth Infantry, Colonel Carl A. Martin. This force was to
withdraw in phases over several weeks, a period deemed sufficient
for Governor Morgan to replace them with units of the soon-to-be
activated West Virginia National Guard. On November 3, a board of
army officers from the Fifth Corps Area met with Morgan's adjutant
to draw up a schedule for the prompt deployment and allocation of
the new guard units throughout the state. One month later, the last
federal unit in West Virginia, a battalion of the Tenth Infantry,
boarded a train for Columbus Barracks, Ohio, quietly ending the
army's involvement in the West Virginia coalfield wars.46

During the three months of federal military intervention, the
army successfully restored order. However, the fundamental
political, social, economic, and labor issues which caused federal
military intervention in the first place remained unresolved as the
strikes in Mingo County continued through the winter of 1921 and
into 1922. As elsewhere, the army's civil disturbance mission was
to restore order and support legally constituted authority, not to
effect social, political, or economic change. The miners still had
their grievances, exacerbated now by the indictment of Keeney,
Mooney, and other local union leaders for offenses against state
law in connection with the March on Logan and the Battle of Blair
Mountain. Although most union leaders escaped conviction, the
influence of federal military intervention upon the UMW was
unintentionally devastating. Unable to halt coal production
effectively through strikes, violent or otherwise, miners and their
unions had little or no bargaining power in dealing with coal
operators who steadfastly refused their demands, prevented the
organization of workers, and vehemently denied unions the
recognition they sought. In October 1922 the UMW ended their
eighteen-month strike which had cost District 17 over two million
dollars and the lives of at least twenty people. The UMW thereafter
suffered a national decline lasting through the 1920s and into the
early 1930s. Not until a federally-mandated labor organization
campaign was launched in the 1930s as part of the New Deal, would
miners' unions begin a nationwide resurgence. In West Virginia, the
UMW nearly faded into oblivion. Having witnessed union
powerlessness to overcome the combined resistance of company,
local, state, and federal authorities to unionization, the miners
of West Virginia were forced by financial necessity to work in
non-union operations. From a state membership of fifty thousand
miners in 1921, West Virginia's membership in the UMW dropped to a
mere six hundred by 1932.47

The procedures which brought federal military interventions in
West Virginia represented a policy transition by the army and the
federal government away from the wartime expedient of direct access
to regulars by state and local authorities back to pre-war
constitutional and statutory procedures. This transition took place
very slowly; nearly two years after the 1918 Armistice and one year
following the congressional and presidential proclamations
officially declaring the war at an end in 1920. During these years
the federal government and the United States Army continued to use
extra-legal wartime procedures against labor organizations and
radicals nationwide. Only after the government and military were
certain that the wartime emergency was over, and that labor
radicalism had been sufficiently tamed, did policies revert to
those of the Progressive Era. As was demonstrated in West Virginia
the policy of direct access, so easily formulated and implemented
in 1917, was not so quickly or easily revoked after 1920. Only
after substantial cajoling, and large-scale troop deployments, were
federal officials able to quiet the disorders in West Virginia and
convince state officials of the importance and urgency of rapidly
recreating a National Guard force, viewed fundamentally as a state
responsibility. By early 1922, the goal of returning responsibility
for handling domestic disturbances to the states had been
successfully accomplished by federal officials and the United
States Army. Future disturbances would be dealt with in the first
resort by new state police and National Guard forces, now
re-established nationwide.

Notes

1. This article is adapted from an unpublished study, "The West
Virginia Coal Mine Wars," by the author, Ron H. Cole and Paul C.
Latawski, formerly of the United States Army Center of Military
History, Washington, D.C. It will be a part of the center's second
volume (1877-1945) of a three-volume history concerning the role of
federal troops in domestic disturbances, 1787-1970; authority is
granted the president under Article IV, Section 4 of the
Constitution, and Sections 5297, 5298, and 5299 of the
Revised Statutes of 1874, see: Cassius M. Dowell,
Military Aid to the Civil Power (Ft. Leavenworth, KS:
General Service School Press, 1925), 201-09; for a composite
history of the role of the U. S. Army in civil disturbances
see: Frederick T. Wilson, Federal Aid in Domestic
Disturbances, 1787-1903 (Washington: GPO, 1903); Jerry M.
Cooper, The Army and Civil Disorder (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1980); Robert W. Coakley, The Role of Federal Military
Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1789-1878 (Washington: U. S. Army
Center of Military History, 1989); Bennett Rich, The President
and Civil Disorder (Washington: The Brookings Institution,
1941) and Edward Berman, Labor Disputes and the President of the
United States (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1924).

3. Howard B. Lee, Bloodletting in Appalachia: The Story of
West Virginia's Four Major Mine Wars and Other Thrilling
Incidents (Morgantown: West Virginia Univ. Press, 1969), 12;
Anna Rochester, Labor and Coal (New York, 1931), 163, 177.
"Cribbing" refers to the company practice of building a crib
structure on the sides of standardized coal cars used to figure
miner production and wages. A cribbed car contained more coal, but
miners still received the same pay per car as if the crib did not
exist.

4. David J. McDonald and Edward A. Lynch, Coal and Unionism:
A History of the American Coal Miner's Union (Indianapolis:
Cornelius, 1939), 136, 141.

7. RG 407, AGO 370.6 (Mingo County), Item 28-b, Letter, Baker to
Dorsey, 3 Nov 1919, NARA; Under existing law at this time
federalized National Guardsmen, once discharged from federal
service, were under no further military obligation to either the
federal government or their respective states. The states,
therefore, had to recreate National Guard units from nothing.

18. Lunt, Law and Order, 117-18; Cole, "Martial Law,"
129-30; Savage, Thunder in the Mountains, 38-39; Testimony
of J. Brockus, West Virginia Constabulary, in United States
Congress, Senate, Committee on Education and Labor, West
Virginia and the Civil War in its Coalfields, Hearings Pursuant to
Senate Resolution 8, 67th Congress, 1st Sess., 1921-22,
hereafter Senate, West Virginia Coalfields, 273.

26. Senate, West Virginia Coalfields, 681; RG 407, AGO
370.6 (Mingo County, West Virginia), Memo, Jervey, Army Chief of
Staff, Operations Division, Office of the Chief of Staff, to Adj.
Gen., USA, 23 Aug 1921, and Tel., Harris, War Department, to
Commanding General, Fifth Corps Area, 25 Aug 1921, NARA; Lee,
Bloodletting in Appalachia, 98-99; David Corbin, Life,
Work, and Rebellion in the Coalfields: The Southern West Virginia
Miners, 1880-1920 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1981), 195,
218-19; Rich, President and Civil Disorder, 162; Savage,
Thunder in the Mountains, 64-65. Legislation recreating the
West Virginia National Guard took effect on 27 July 1921, and the
first National Guard unit, Company I, 150th Infantry, was activated
on 21 August. By late October, eleven state militia companies would
be in existence. John H. Carnock was named adjutant; see
Cole, "Martial Law," 139-40.

27. Senate, West Virginia Coalfields, 1032; Rich,
President and Civil Disorder, 162; Mauer Mauer and Calvin F.
Senning, "Billy Mitchell, the Air Service, and the Mingo War,"
West Virginia History 30(October 1968): 342.

28. Lunt, Law and Order, 126; Rich, President and
Civil Disorder, 162.

35. Rich, President and Civil Disorder, 163; Lunt, Law
and Order, 131, 140; RG 407, AGO 370.6 (Mingo County),
Proclamation by the President to the Citizens of West Virginia, 30
Aug 1921, NARA; United States, War Department, Annual Report of
the Secretary of War, 1921 (Washington: GPO, 1921), 204.